Getting Started With Your Website:

CPanel: Backup Your Website Every Time You Make a Change

Right from the outset, it’s a good idea to make a backup of ALL the files in your Website and place them in a website backup folder for your computer. It’s also a good idea to keep the backup on a memory stick, or remote harddrive. You never know when something strange will happen.

Backup Your Website Every Time You Make a Change. Keep the folders in the same order that they are on your site.

And remember the maxim:

Save Early; Save Often!

To make a backup, click on the file manager link in the “Files” section of your CPanel. (If a popup box appears, choose to open Web Root and make sure that “Show hidden files” is selected.)

Navigate through until you get to public_html until you can see the file names in your website folder. Choose ‘Select All’ and click on ‘Compress’. The following images show how to download a backup of one folder, in this case: the WordPress folder. But the procedure is the same for any of your website folders.

Toggle “Zip Archive”, type in the filename you’d like and click on “Compress Files”.

Highlight the Zip File and click on “Download”. (If you do not see the zip file, go back one directory and forward again. The zip file should appear.)

Toggle “Save File” and click “OK”.

Once the zip file with your backup is on your computer, please remember to delete the zip file from your site.

Tip
Whenever you make any changes to your website, make sure that you keep copies of the changes and put them into your backup folder.

Backup Your Databases (often)

When something goes wrong one of the easiest ways of getting your site back is to restore the database from a backup and replace the files with fresh ones.

WordPress is just one of the programs on a website that may require a database. There are also Forums, Shopping Carts, etc. etc.

To make a backup of your database(s) (remember, you should be doing this on a regular basis), go to your CPanel (http://youatcw.net/cpanel/), and click on the phpMyAdmin link in the Databases area (it may be located under “MySQL Databases).

Select the name of the database from those that appear in the menu on the left. Look near the top of the right side of the page that appears and select “Export”. Make sure that the Format is “SQL”. Click on “Custom Display all possible options”

Under Object Creation Options, Check the “Add DROP TABLE” box (so you can over-write an existing database if you need to restore it). Also make sure the “Add IF NOT EXISTS” box is checked (to prevent errors during restores if the tables are already there).

Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on “Go”. The database backup will downloaded to your computer.